The US decision to advance the designation of Muslim Brotherhood organizations as terrorist groups opens a unique window of opportunity for Israel to build a defensive wall capable of blocking and neutralizing the spearhead of Sunni jihadism, both internationally and inside Israel.
The Muslim Brotherhood's penetration into the US and European states threatens not only those countries but also Israel. If the gradual takeover of the West by radical Islam, which is already bearing poisonous fruit such as the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, is completed, Israel will find itself without its natural partners and will quickly discover that even the more moderate forces in the Muslim world are submitting to extremism.
Israel must therefore act without delay, together with the Americans and with those actors in Europe who understand the danger of an Islamic takeover, in three spheres.
Regarding Western domestic issues, the imperative is to expose all early-stage Islamist infiltration across public life, including education, academia, politics and government, and uproot it while it is still possible. Israeli security services share intelligence with their partners regarding the Muslim Brotherhood's terrorist networks in Europe and the US, but those findings only reveal the tip of the iceberg. Before it is too late, the entire iceberg must be melted: tracking the construction of the Brotherhood's educational, communal and nonprofit infrastructures and cutting them off at their source. Above all, funding pipelines must be dried up. These no longer come only from the Middle East but also from European Union funds that have been misused. The path to draining the Islamist swamp runs through outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood and its various organizational frameworks in Europe as well.
In the international issue, Israel must use the momentum to target the axis connecting the Muslim Brotherhood to the two states that support it: Qatar and Turkey. It is an absolute absurdity that these two countries are considered Western allies while actively paving the way for the downfall of Western civilization. Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is a terrorist organization, and the danger posed by the Brotherhood's other branches, if Qatar and Turkey are allowed to cultivate them in the US and Europe, will be similar to the threat posed by Hamas. Europeans and Americans cannot continue closing their eyes to the destructive consequences that are already visible in their own societies.
Finally, in Israel's domestic issues, urgent action is needed to suffocate and incinerate every Islamist arm that has grown and multiplied here, from the Raam party to nonprofits that have appeared under the cover of the Israeli democracy's helplessness or blindness. Content of sermons in mosques, as is done for example in the United Arab Emirates, must become routinely monitored here as well. A decade or two ago, such a step might have triggered global uproar and accusations of violating human rights. Today, as Americans and Europeans are also learning to defend themselves against the Islamist epidemic using every available tool, including outlawing such organizations, there is no reason to permit the activity of Hamas supporters inside Israel, precisely in the place that the Muslim Brotherhood sees as a focal point for its expansionist ambitions.
